I STAND OVER the grave.
Isn’t fancy. Just a lump of granite, carved in that classic tombstone arch. Like a little doorway. Funny, right? When we die, they stick a stone door above our heads, as if we’ve got anywhere else to be.
Sunset streaks the sky, feathers of fire. I take a deep whiff of my lilies. They smell like Mom’s funeral. Waxy, sweet, just a little nauseating.
There’s a lot I could say. For once, I choose not to. I just stand there. The breeze lifts my hair from my neck and exposes the faint red circle where a uniform tag once sat.
Then I lay the lilies down.
It’s taken me a while to visit. Two whole months—which feels shitty, except my life has spun into a whirlwind of interviews with Supers and police officers, hospital visits, shopping around for a decent therapist. The days whiz by, too fast for me to grasp. I’ve barely had time to exist, let alone buy flowers.
By now, I’ve told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, again and again and again. I’ve watched our video from city hall so many times it replays when I sleep. I’ve talked on Jav’s podcast, on the Sunnylake news, to strangers in the street. And I’ve told everyone who asks and several who don’t that no, I’m not the one who uncovered Project Zero.
If they want to meet her, they’d have to follow me here. Through the gate of Sunnylake cemetery, to a gray stone ringed in lilies.
“Think she’ll like them?” Sherman asks. We pooled funds to buy a decent bouquet from a stand at the open-air market. She suggested lighting candles, too, but I don’t want open flames anywhere near.
“Dunno,” I say. “We didn’t exactly talk about our taste in flowers.”
Sherman takes my hand, interlacing our fingers. Both of us look down at Dr. Amelia Lopez’s name, inscribed in stone. Remembered, as she should be.
Sherman isn’t doing so bad. She’s down one kidney, but if anyone thought that’d bench her, I want to try what they’re tripping on. She’s even riding her bike again, despite protests from her dad, mom, Aaron, every doctor she’s spoken to, and anyone else with common sense.
I’m not in that last category. I trust her when she says Supers heal faster than us Normie types.
I squeeze her hand. My fingers are stiff and sore. Unsurprising, given how many minor blood vessels Crystalis popped. The ringing in my ears faded ages ago, but the world’s still a little muffled. Maybe it always will be.
Doesn’t seem so awful, really. Not when I know my family, my house, and my neighborhood are safe.
“Where to?” Sherman asks as we leave the cemetery through the spiky black iron gates. Her motorcycle rests on its prop, tilted away from the curb. It fills the space between us when Sherman steps into the road, crossing to the bike’s far side. The city reeks (as always) of garbage and traffic and melting tar, but when Sherman leans closer, over the saddle, my senses swirl with her instead: sun-warmed leather and electricity. Way down the street, where the houses begin, the splinters of a smashed Blair Homes sign reach up like fingers grasping futile at the sky.
“Thought you had work.” I lean closer, too. My thigh nudges the motorcycle’s side, right against the bulgy silver circular bit that pokes out of the engine. I have this vague suspicion it’s called an “air filter” and a vaguer horror that Luis might yet make me fluent in gearhead. “Don’t want the Captain to fire you again.”
“I’d like to see him try.”
Masks aren’t allowed when you’re being grilled by the authorities, so it goes without saying that I’ve seen the Captain’s face—not that I’m telling you what he looks like. He’s busy as ever, rebranding Hench as an independent operation. McCarthy has suggested a bunch of alternatives to lackeying for villains. Rubble clearance after Super attacks, construction of affordable housing, cat breeding. Not sure if she’s serious about that last one. Hench will never compete with the big boys from downtown. But perhaps they can buy a few lots, make a big difference to small people.
“Okay, token protest over,” I say. “I ain’t gonna turn down free taxi service.”
Sherman hangs her helmet off the handlebars so she can fold her arms and remind me yet again that she has serious biceps, and I am seriously gay. “Who said anything about free? I got fares, Jones, and you’re racking up the meter.”
“Right, right. What’s the exchange rate for, uh…” I check the tiny, pointless fashion pocket on my shorts. “Three balls of lint?”
“I was thinking more like a kiss.” Sherman quirks one corner of her lips in that way she knows I can’t resist. I swat her.
“Quit abusing your dimple powers.”
The dimple deepens. “Is that a yes?”
I don’t bother answering. Just lean over the bike, cup her face between my palms, and pay up.
It’s amazing. Slow and soft, smooth as silk. Her tongue dips into my mouth, mine into hers. She tastes of warmth and spit and, faintly, coffee, and my lips tingle like I’ve licked a battery, and God, I wanna feel this same glittering sparkle all over.
I can’t help but deepen it. Slow to urgent, soft to firm, my hands sliding down to her hips, over the bare, solid warmth of her muscular sides. Not caring who might see.
Sherman grunts in what can only be approval. She buries one hand in my hair, her other arm wound around my neck, and crushes herself against the bike between us like she wishes it were me. Forget leaving room for Jesus; her Harley is plenty wide enough to appease our parents. Still, I’m tall enough to tilt her back a little, and she trusts me enough to let me, making this sweet, breathy noise that means more than I have words to describe. I kiss it off her lips as the world narrows to the points where we touch.
Tragically, a buzz interrupts our canoodling. I extract myself, grimace an apology at Sherman, and check my phone—only to groan at Hernando’s caller ID.
Changed it to Dad on a whim, couple weeks back. Then Hernandad, because I got weirdly nervous about it, and puns make him pull a face like he just bit a lemon. It’s currently just Dad again. We’ll see how that goes. But today? Feels kinda good.
Until I put the phone to my ear.
“Hi, mija.”
“Hey.”
“Y’know what’s funny?”
“Uhhh…”
“I’m home. Lyssa’s home. But neither of us can see you.”
I check the time, and—shit. Past curfew. Hardly my fault, though. I mean, 8 p.m.? Exceptions only for evening therapy sessions? Brutal.
“You’re awful at jokes,” I tell Hernando. “That’s not funny at all.”
“Wait until you hear the punch line. Grounded for a week, unless you get back here as fast as humanly possible—put me on speaker—without breaking speed limits, please, Sofia. Super reflexes or not.”
Sherman jams on her helmet, curls spilling through the open visor. “Yes, sir.”
“Still not funny,” I tell Hernando as I wedge my own helmet over my head and slot onto the bike behind her, tucking an arm around her waist.
A faint crackle—Lyssa, laughing maniacally in the background. “Is to me!”
Goober.
“Home it is?” asks Sherman as I hang up.
I tuck my phone into nature’s pocket. “Home it is.”
Hernando’s cracking down so hard on me. Almost like I nearly got myself blown up while uncovering a conspiracy to gentrify our district. Still, every time he ruffles my hair, cooks me breakfast, calls me mija, I see the pride in his eyes.
Sherman doesn’t break any speed limits. Cuts one red light mighty fine, though—then, once we arrive, bribes me out of telling Hernando with another kiss. I pull back before she dissolves all thoughts of curfew, melts me down like a bath bomb, leaves me full of nothing but sweet, thick foam. Still, as she sails around the corner, away into the night, her warmth stays with me. A glittering tingle, just a little electric. Diamond dust on my lips.
I don’t quite know where we’re going, me and her. But I sure can’t wait to find out.
Four texts from Jav arrived at the same time I did. I check my phone as the elevator—functional, for now—creaks up to the top floor.
Finally. The essay has been defeated, at dire cost to sanity and soul.
Need hugs to revive me.
Possibly chocolate.
Definitely chocolate.
“Dinner’s getting cold!” Hernando calls—must’ve heard the elevator. His voice carries through the paper-thin walls. “It’s gonna lose the love!”
I pick up the pace, shooting off a reply before I bash through the door and toe off my sneakers and grunt hi to Lyssa and sink into the perfect, warm embrace of home.
Riley: emergency chocolate and hugs delivery due on your doorstep first thing tomorrow
Jav: You’re my hero.
That’s the last thing I see before I send my phone to sleep, in accordance with Hernando’s new rules for family dinner. Then there’s just me and my reflection in the black screen. Smiling.
It’s small, this life I’ve built with my family and friends. But it’s enough. We’re Normies, after all. We can’t run around saving the world.